Google optimizes Play Store to surface quality apps, hide the crap

With more than three million apps available to download, the Google Play Store is by far the largest app store in the world. The harsh truth, however, is that many of those apps frequently crash, are slow to render and use way too much battery power. In other words, they aren't worth your time.

Google isn’t oblivious to the issue. In fact, they’ve recently taken steps that’ll make it easier for users to sidestep the junk and get right to the high quality apps they desire.

Andrew Ahn, a project manager for the Google Play team, said on Thursday that they’ve enhanced their search and discovery algorithms to reflect quality apps. What this means is that higher quality apps will show up in searches and recommended lists more often than bum apps.

Ahn said the change has already had a positive impact on app engagement as they’ve noticed that people tend to use higher quality apps more often and uninstall them less often.

App developers have a number of resources available to help test and tune their apps both before and after they go live.

The Play Console, Ahn notes, is useful in finding and fixing a number of quality-related issues. Android vitals, meanwhile, uses opted-in devices that have your app installed to help identify key performance issues while the pre-launch report shows reports from alpha and beta app testing. And of course, ratings and reviews from users shouldn’t be ignored as they can provide valuable insight into shortcomings in your app.